Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013 - (Page 26)

CONTRIBUTORS TIM LONG The “call from Hollywood” is a storied part of every career in the entertainment business. For Tim Long, a writer on “The Simpsons,” it came about quite casually. “Mutual friends got me an interview with Mike Scully, who was running the show at the time,” he recalls. “Just by way of small talk, I told Mike about a time when I was a kid and we got snowed into the school overnight. He thought that would make a good ‘Simpsons’ episode, and he ended up hiring me.” Thirteen years later, Long has written numerous episodes of the show, been nominated for eight Emmy Awards and, contrary to his initial instincts, became an advocate for his new California home (“Falling in Love With … Los Angeles,” page 32). Here are his thoughts on being part of one of the most successful TV shows in history. THE WRITE STUFF From right: California convert Tim Long; his co-workers, “The Simpsons.” Why did you want to be a comedy writer? Outside of sports, for which I have no aptitude, it felt like the only job that was both lucrative and fun. What are some of your favorite personal contributions to the show? I like little jokes that draw on my personal experiences, and that no one else could have come up with. Who ﬁrst told you that you were funny? Still waiting — ﬁngers crossed! Actually, my mom was the ﬁrst person who told me I was funny. Camber Lay behind the bar at Parallel 37. P H OTO G RA P H S BY TO N Y SA X E T AH, WILDERNESS Clockwise from top left: Cleo and Judah in their bedroom tent; the family says “hi” just outside their casita; Cleo lassoing the bull head. WRITERS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS 26 The stewardess winces a little, saying we may have chosen the coldest weekend of the year to visit Tucson. I turn to my husband and say, “Isn’t Arizona supposed to be the Florida of the West?” He shakes his head, worried it will be too chilly for any of the adventures we’ve planned. We’re wimpy Californians. Forty degrees in our foggy, single-paned hometown can feel like Siberia. But when we touch down, the desert air is sunny and inviting. We hop in a cab and head northwest through Tucson. As we climb into the foothills, Cleo, our 6-year-old daughter, and Judah, our 5-year-old son, watch the city give way to a stark lunar landscape. Noses pressed to the windows, they point to the prickly pear and towering saguaro cactuses that dot this scrubby frontier. Mesquite and ironwood trees offer the only shade under a sky so blue, it looks electric. There’s a hyperreal quality to this place, as if we’ve just landed on the dusty set of a Peckinpah movie. Forty minutes later, we pass the ﬁrst sign for Dove Mountain, a Ritz-Carlton resort with a main hotel, a casita village, ﬁve restaurants and lounges, a spa, tennis courts and a golf course. “Here we are!” I say, expecting to see the hotel rise up like a monolith. But it’s another mile before it comes into view. The complex is designed to blend organically into 850 acres of Sonoran Desert — and it does. After we check in, just past noon, we’d happily walk the short distance to our suite, but succumb instead to Gustavo, our golf-cart driver, who takes us up the hill to the casita village. Passing one of three outdoor swimming pools, he points out a 235-foot water slide built into a rocky slope. Cleo squeals with delight, imagining the thrill ride in her future. The ﬁrst thing Tony and I notice when we enter our casita: the airy, dramatic views of the Tortolita Mountains and the Wild Burro Canyon. The ﬁrst thing the kids notice: the in-room camping service. “Dad, you’re not going to W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M SHOSHANA BERGER (“Desert Hearts,” page 64) took a break from covering supergeeks at Wired magazine to round up her family and head to the high desert north of Tucson. She was the founding editor of do-ityourself design magazine ReadyMade and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Travel + Leisure, Budget Travel and Sunset. W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M HEART & SEOUL BENEATH ITS SPEEDY NEON SHEEN, THE KOREAN CAPITAL IS ASIA’S CONTEMPORARY ART HUB. CHRISTINA CHOI EXPLORES A METROPOLIS STEEPED IN BOTH CREATIVITY AND TRADITION PARALLEL 37’S BARTENDER, CAMBER LAY, FINDS INSPIRATION IN THE BAY AREA’S BOUNTY P H O T O G R A P H S B Y S AT U P A L A N D E R SERVE’S UP Clockwise from top left: Cliff Drysdale at his eponymous tennis center; a view from the Club Lounge, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean; Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park’s famed lighthouse. GAME CHANGER it’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and Camber Lay has just arrived for work at Parallel 37 at The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco. The lead bartender and creator of the restaurant’s celebrated cocktail program, Lay begins setting up for the night, making sure that she has enough glassware and that the rack is fully stocked with spirits. Zesters, bar knives, shakers and strainers — essential tools of the bartending trade — are freshly washed and drying on folded white towels. Lay arranges BY JAN NEWBERRY bunches of herbs she picked up from PHOTOGRAPHS BY AYA BRACKETT the kitchen and gathers a supply of fresh fruit. It’s a ritual familiar to bartenders everywhere — except that neither Lay nor her staff slices limes or cuts strips of peel from lemons and oranges ahead of time to use as twists. “It’s my biggest pet peeve,” says Lay. “I hate it when the lime on the edge 104 W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M SEEK ING A T ENNIS T U NEU P, JAY J ENNINGS HEA DS TO T HE COU RT S OF K EY BISCAYNE T H E R I T Z - C A R LT O N M A G A Z I N E 105 Bay Area-based photographer AYA BRACKETT (“Lay of the Land,” page 104) had the pleasure of photographing mixologist Camber Lay’s cocktails in San Francisco. Brackett’s work, often inspired by still life painting, has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Dwell, Bon Appétit and Monocle. 74 M My tennis game was missing: No, it hadn’t gone completely AWOL, but it was like an engine with a misﬁring cylinder. Three solid forehands would be followed by one that landed 6 feet beyond the baseline. An ace on a ﬁrst serve would alternate with ones buried in the net. My footwork, never a strong point, left me either waving at balls too far away or fending off the ones that were too close. I needed a tuneup. So I set out for the renowned Cliff Drysdale Tennis Center at The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, Miami in southern Florida, where the pock-pock sound of tennis balls is as steady — and as constant — as the surf. After an on-court career in which he won 35 Davis Cup matches for South Africa and a U.S. Open doubles championship, and helped form the Association of Tennis Professionals, Drysdale gained even greater fame as a television commentator while building a tennis management company that now spans the world. Key Biscayne, however, is where he makes his home when he’s not working tournaments, and The Ritz-Carlton center, his ﬁrst, with 10 green clay hydrocourts and one hard court, serves as a kind of head ofﬁce, albeit one suffused with his relaxed persona and welcoming philosophy. Square stucco pillars, plentiful plantings, and loose netting behind the backstops rather than chain-link fences and taut windscreens make one think the site was constructed by meticulous, tennis-crazed European villagers. Here, Drysdale often adopts the role of benevolent squire surveying the clinics in progress, as he does when he speaks with me on my ﬁrst day. He tells me that he dislikes the word “clinic,” because he wants to convey that the experience should be fun — “fun” being his ﬁrst pillar of instruction. That doesn’t mean it’s CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF THE RITZ-CARLTON, KEY BISCAYNE; KIKOR PHOTOGRAPHY; PBNJ PRODUCTIONS/BLEND IMAGES/CORBIS LAY OF THE LAND JUST OUTSIDE OF TUCSON LIES A FAMILY-FRIENDLY OASIS. SHOSHANA BERGER BRINGS THE BROOD 64 SPORTS T HE MAESTRO FA M I LY T R AV E L DESERT HEARTS COURTESY OF THE SIMPSONS/FOX Why is “The Simpsons” considered the ultimate writing job? Because cartoons can’t complain about the writing — much. It’s very much a writing-driven show, a fact that even our wonderful cast acknowledges. W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M JAY JENNINGS (“Game Changer,” page 74), a freelance writer and former features editor at Tennis magazine, is the editor of “Tennis and the Meaning of Life: A Literary Anthology of the Game,” and the author of “Carry the Rock: Race, Football, and the Soul of an American City.” MODERN TR ADI T IONS This page: Paintbrushes for sale in the Insa-dong neighborhood, where artists studied during the Joseon Dynasty. Opposite page: Bukchon Hanok, a preserved traditional Korean village, is a window into the Seoul of 600 years ago. 88 W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M T H E R I T Z - C A R LT O N M A G A Z I N E 89 SATU PALANDER (“Heart and Seoul,” page 88) is a photographer based in Helsinki and Seoul, and works for a diverse range of Finnish, Korean and international publications, including Monocle and Elle. For this shoot, she particularly loved visiting the famous dumpling spot, Gaesung Mandoo Gung, where they “were making dumplings at such a high speed, I actually had to ask them to slow down a bit for a photo!” http://WWW.RITZCARLTON.COM http://WWW.RITZCARLTON.COM http://WWW.RITZCARLTON.COM http://WWW.RITZCARLTON.COM http://WWW.RITZCARLTON.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013
Contents
Contributors
Editor’s Letter
President’s Letter
Falling in Love With ... Los Angeles
Design
Technology
On the Boulevards
Shopping
Jewelry
Watches
Family
Local Knowledge
Sports
Abu Dhabi
Seoul
Fashion
Culinary
Let Us Stay With You
Heritage

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Spring 2013